Workshops in Minnesota, November 2012

Hi, Minnesota! I’m Daniel Greene, and I’m going to be in Minneapolis – St. Paul the weekend of Friday, November 9th and Saturday, November 10th presenting two workshops. The first one, on Friday night from 6pm to 9pm, is about fingerspelling and pronouncing foreign names and words. It’s fascinating all the different spellings and sounds there are in different languages, and in America, in the English language, we have so many sounds from all over the world. And we’ll be talking about spelling rules and sound systems.

And then, on Saturday from 9 to 4 on November 10th, we’ll be talking about vague language. You know, vague language is part of everyday speech and really part of the fabric of our society. It’s not a bad thing; it’s actually a good thing. And there are some interesting reasons why people use it. And — we always have to decide — what are we going to do with this vague language? Make it explicit? Keep it vague? And if we keep it vague, how do we do that? How do Deaf people sign vaguely in American Sign Language? How do Hearing people speak vaguely in English? These are the kinds of questions we’ll be tackling in the workshop, and I look forward to working on it with you! Hope to see you there, thanks.